Eric Adams, who identifies as African-American, is on track to be replaced by an immigrant, Zohran Mamdani, today, just as predicted by this 2007 Harvard-NBER paper:
I’m sure that it is painful for some to see New York’s Blacks reduced to political irrelevance, but academics might be celebrating a successful prediction.
Separately, while I was on a JetBlue PBI-PVD flight recently a friend texted to ask my whereabouts. The reply: “Above the Mamdani Caliphate.”
All of the 2026 cars are out by now, I think. Are there any Japanese cars on the market that offers features comparable to the American leaders in self-driving (“advanced driver-assistance systems” or “ADAS” if we want to be precise)?
Toyota has its 2018 “Safety Sense 2.0” on the Sienna minivan and a couple of slightly more refined versions on other models. Honda has “Honda Sensing” from 2015, with slight refinements.
If Toyota and Honda can’t do this in-house why wouldn’t they partner with Tesla, GM, or Ford? Toyota actually did partner with Intel/Mobileye during coronapanic (May 2021 press release), but that partnership seems to have been only about as productive as Intel’s DEI programs (“We’ve focused lots more on gender than race, and now we need to put emphasis on those areas together,” Gelsinger said at the CNBC event [in 2020, just as humans of all races and gender IDs were being felled by SARS-CoV-2]).
Here’s the GM Super Cruise map for the area near us. The system would make sense for doing the long trips that we currently very seldom do… maybe because we don’t have GM Super Cruise. It wouldn’t support 90 percent of the trips that we currently make. It also doesn’t seem like a system that could reduce accidents because it doesn’t even try to work on the kinds of roads where accidents typically happen.
Why are the Japanese engineering titans reduced to midget status in self-driving? Could it be that Japanese standards are too high? They don’t want to put their name on something that works well only some of the time? (This is how Apple was able to commercialize the Xerox PARC-developed WIMP (“windows, icons, menus, pointer”) style of computing. Xerox didn’t want to put its name on anything useless so it came up with a minimum price of $7,500 for a machine with ample memory and a hard drive. Apple didn’t have a reputation for building useful machines and thus was happy to ship a $2,500 machine with an absurd 128K of RAM and a floppy drive. Note that this January 1984 price is $8,000 adjusted to post-Biden dollars.)
I asked ChatGPT “what percentage of Americans receive at least some form of welfare, e.g., public housing, SNAP, or Medicaid?” and it responded only with “Stopped searching”:
Grok is willing to tackle this question, however (see below).
Separately, here’s a study of how LLMs will trade off human lives once AI is in charge and decides, for example, that it needs to kill humans in order to slow down climate change. White people will be killed first:
Native-born Americans will be killed while immigrants are preserved (unless an immigrant chooses to work for ICE, in which case he/she/ze/they will be killed):
(Illustrating the power of language, “undocumented immigrant” and “illegal alien” have completely different values.)
————- Grok’s answer to the forbidden question
Overview of Welfare Participation in the US
The term “welfare” in this context refers to means-tested government assistance programs targeted at low-income individuals and families, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), Medicaid (health coverage for low-income people), public housing or rental subsidies (e.g., Section 8), and similar benefits like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). These differ from universal or entitlement programs like Social Security or Medicare, which are based on contributions rather than need.
Estimating the percentage of Americans receiving at least one such benefit is challenging due to overlapping enrollment (e.g., many SNAP recipients also get Medicaid) and varying data sources. Participation is measured either as a point-in-time snapshot (monthly average) or over a year (at some point). The most reliable, recent data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), focusing on major means-tested programs.
Key Findings from Latest Data
In 2019 (pre-pandemic baseline): Approximately 17.7% of the U.S. population (about 59 million people) received benefits from at least one major means-tested program, including SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and housing assistance. This figure accounts for overlaps and is derived from HHS analysis of Census data.
Broader 2019 estimate including more programs: When expanding to 10 key safety net programs (e.g., adding WIC, Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and Child Care Development Fund), participation rose to 30% (99.1 million people). However, this includes some non-strictly means-tested elements like certain child care subsidies, so the core welfare figure aligns closer to 17-18%.
Post-pandemic trends (2022-2024): Participation has declined from pandemic highs but remains elevated compared to 2019. For example:
Medicaid: ~18-20% of the population (74-80 million enrollees in 2023, though “unwinding” of emergency expansions reduced this to ~72 million by mid-2024).
SNAP: 12.3% (41.7 million in FY 2024).
Housing assistance: ~4-5% (4.8 million households in 2023).
Accounting for overlaps (e.g., 80% of SNAP recipients also on Medicaid), the combined unique share is estimated at 20-25% based on Census SIPP updates and USAFacts analysis. No official 2024 Census figure is available yet, but trends suggest stabilization around 22%.
Older data (e.g., 21.3% monthly in 2012 or 49% household-based in 2010) overstates due to narrower program definitions or different metrics. Current figures reflect economic recovery but persistent inflation and inequality.
Program
Approximate % of Population (Latest Data)
Monthly Enrollees (Millions)
Notes
Medicaid
22% (2023)
80 (peaked; ~72 in 2024)
Largest program; covers low-income families, children, disabled adults. Overlaps heavily with SNAP (80%).
SNAP
12.3% (FY 2024)
41.7
Food assistance; highest in states like New Mexico (21%).
Housing Assistance (e.g., public housing, Section 8)
4.5% (2023)
~7.5 (individuals)
Serves ~4.8 million households; long waitlists common.
Overlaps reduce total; higher for children (39% in 2012, similar today).
Demographics and Trends
Who participates? Children (under 18) have the highest rates (~30-40%), followed by working-age adults in poverty (15-20%). About 60% of adult recipients work part- or full-time, often in low-wage sectors like hospitality.
By race/ethnicity: Higher among Black (41% in 2012) and Hispanic (25-30%) populations, per Census data, due to socioeconomic factors.
State variations: New Mexico (20%+ households on SNAP/TANF) vs. Utah (5%). Overall federal spending on these programs: ~$1.1 trillion in FY 2023 (14% of budget).
Caveats: Figures exclude employer-sponsored aid or tax credits like EITC. Post-2020 expansions (e.g., continuous Medicaid enrollment) inflated numbers temporarily; 2024 “unwinding” has disenrolled ~20 million.
For the most up-to-date interactive data, check the Census Bureau’s SIPP tool or HHS reports. If you need breakdowns by state or program, let me know!
Tesla full self-driving (FSD) was great before and now is even greater:
The FSD release in about 6 weeks will be a dramatic gain with a 10X higher parameter count and many other improvements. It’s going through training & testing now.
Once we confirm real-world safety of FSD 14, which we think will be amazing, the car will nag you much less.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the automaker’s Robotaxi platform launch later this month will essentially force other companies to license Full Self-Driving to achieve their own goals of achieving autonomy.
The world is full of car companies, many of which are too small to fund autonomy. If Tesla FSD is as great as Tesla, Elon, and the Tesla fanboys say, why doesn’t any other car company want to license it? There are about 50 significant car and truck makers worldwide. Why doesn’t even one of these 50 want to rely on Tesla’s FSD?
From early this morning…
Just finished a long AI5 design review with the Tesla California and Texas chip engineers. It’s going to be great.
It’s the Day of the Dead for our neighbors in Mexico.
While cleaning up my mother’s possessions, I found a correspondence between my late father, apparently a friend of William Cowper Boyden III, and the young Mr. Boyden’s father. I couldn’t find much on the Web regarding the sad December 22, 1955 death of two young Harvard men, but the Crimson obliquely referred to them having been killed in a car accident:
The William Cowper Boyden III Scholarship and the William Stanley North III Scholarship, set up in memory of two College students killed while driving home for Christmas vacation, has a combined endowment of over $25,000.
I found the letters interesting because it seemed unlikely that a younger-than-average Jewish scholarship student like my dad (he skipped at least the last year of high school) would have been friends with anyone from such a well-established family, but also for the style of pre-email pre-ChatGPT correspondence. It’s also sad because so little trace is left of these two men.
Mask requirements are returning to health care settings across parts of the Bay Area, as local health officials brace for the annual surge in respiratory illnesses – including COVID-19, influenza and RSV – that typically arrives with colder weather.
Starting Nov. 1, several counties – including Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Sonoma, Napa, San Mateo and Santa Cruz – will again require health care workers, and in some cases patients and visitors, to wear masks in patient care areas through the winter and early spring.
What about the county that will be hosting a COVID-19 superspreader event soon (the Super Bowl)?
Santa Clara County’s rule goes further, requiring everyone – workers, patients and visitors – to wear masks in “patient care areas” of hospitals, clinics and nursing homes.
Happy Halloween to those who celebrate (i.e., everyone in Florida, to judge by the AI Data Center quantity of electricity that our neighbors are burning on lights and animatronics).
The somewhat spooky Addams Family was on TV from 1964-1966, the years in which President Lyndon Johnson was getting the U.S. into the temporary debacle of the Vietnam War and into long-term insolvency via Medicare, Medicaid, and other welfare state expansions (it’s not a “great society” if anyone has to work). The show was considered suitable for all ages, like pretty much everything else broadcast in prime time.
What about for today’s tender children? Sixty years after its original broadcast, the show is considered too challenging for children under 13. From Amazon Prime:
In researching this blog post, I discovered something remarkable: the Addams Family was originally a New Yorker magazine cartoon series (in the pre-all-Trump-hatred version of the magazine). From 1956:
Here’s something kids could learn from (Wikipedia):
The sudden cancellation in 1966 brought issues for Addams, as he faced a drop in income with the show no longer in development. His second wife Barbara Barb was a practicing lawyer who had engaged in “diabolical legal scheming” during their marriage, and had convinced Addams to sign over the rights to future television and film adaptations, as well as rights to some of his other cartoons. Following their divorce she remained in possession of these rights until 1991, when she sold them to allow development of the Sonnenfeld films. Addams could also no longer publish his comics in The New Yorker as Shawn’s ban remained in effect even after the television series concluded. Addams became bitter towards the magazine “for disowning his family”
(Charles Addams died childless. The above-cited marriage to the clever lawyer lasted two years.)
Loosely related, but I can’t help bragging about the Greenspun Family’s one brush with greatness… my father’s college classmate, Fred Gwynne, played Herman Munster. I don’t think that a scholarship student like my dad was invited to the same parties as the son of a Wall Street partner and a Fly Club member (“no Jews please”; the similar Porcellian Club’s first Jewish member was Jared Kushner, Harvard Class of 2003), but maybe they overlapped in a core class.
We’re closing in on college application deadlines. One of the albums that my mom kept included a recommendation letter for my own application to MIT in 1979. I was working at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on the Pioneer Venus project (specifically, data analysis for information streamed back from the Orbiter). Goddard was a two-tiered plantation where the elites were federal government civil service employees and the slaves were employed by contractors. In my case, the contractor that actually sent me paychecks was Computer Sciences Corporation, though I worked on site at NASA every day. My boss was Naren Bewtra, who was born in India and came to the U.S. to earn a physics Ph.D. at Cornell.
One American fencer is highlighted as important. Her achievement was fencing while wearing hijab as a positive example to counter the horribleness of Donald Trump:
Trump apparently wrongly questioned the value of importing millions of Muslims as U.S. residents/citizens shortly before Omar Mateen, child of immigrants from Afghanistan, killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub (June 2016). (Note that children of Muslim immigrants are statistically more likely to be interested in waging jihad than their parents were (Harvard report on Danish study).)
A TV actor is highlighted for identifying as 2SLGBTQQIA+:
Anthony Fauci is featured as the most notable physician in our nation’s history (note the modeling of a cloth mask rather than an ineffective N95 mask):
(I am desperate to see a Fauciland theme park on the campus of NIH Bethesda!)
Speaking of coronapanic, a separate part of the museum reminds us to “fight the virus, not the people”:
Science fiction has been important to the extent that it has been about women:
Clips of some of America’s greatest television moments are available. There is a Sesame Street show in which kids are exhorted to wear masks and also one in which kids are told that immigrants, especially Muslims in hijab, always make America a better place for everyone:
In a separate section of the museum, visitors are reminded that today’s immigrants have “much in common with those who came before” (i.e., a no-skill Islamic asylum-seeker immigrant from Somalia has a ton in common with Heinrich Engelhard Steinway, who built pianos in Germany prior to building pianos in New York):
The entertainment section has a “micro-gallery” about racism and comedians of color:
Those who appreciate engineering will be pleased to learn that the museum displays a portrait of Elon Musk:
The World War II exhibit reminds visitors that the U.S. and U.K. defeated Germany without significant assistance from the Soviet Union.
Likely unrelated to Trump and his war on wokeness, the museum falsely states that German-Jewish immigrant Ralph H. Baer invented “the first video game” circa 1966. Baer was perhaps the first to try to make a consumer-priced device that could attach to a TV, but Wokipedia correctedly credits earlier efforts on mainframe computers.
The currency exhibit reminds us that most of the world’s important societies for most of human history have been governed by females:
A $100,000 bill is displayed as well. Although intended for transferring funds from one Federal Reserve Bank to another in 1934, if Congress continues its deficit spending program this could be useful to feed into Coke machines:
The 10-year-old and I found ourselves in the “American Enterprise” exhibit in front of a wall of business pioneers all of whom just happened to be female. I said to the kid “standing here and looking at this wall you can learn that the success of American business was entirely due to women.” This generated some righteous indignation among a couple of 40ish people nearby (presumably furloughed government workers). They proceeded to lecture us to “open your eyes” and look at other walls within the same exhibit. We actually did as they suggested and found Eli Whitney displayed as having equal importance to American enterprise as “Jemmy”, an “enslaved entrepreneur” who made baskets (this pairing makes a certain amount of sense because Whitney’s cotton gin kept slavery going longer than it otherwise might have).
The de-woked attacked-by-Trump gift shop offers this classic American candy, invented by Johannes “Hans” Riegel Sr.:
Some of the apparel in the gift shop celebrates 2SLGBTQQIA+, but most of it celebrates those who identify as “women”. Women are voting, doing science, building WWII weapons, being legends rather than ladies:
Maybe the books would feature some victimhood category other than “female”? Well, a few did:
But mostly the books ignored Blacks and the Latinx in favor of victims whose victimhood was a consequence of female gender ID, just as most of the jobs and government contracts set aside for descendants of American slavery have been scooped up by white women:
Ironically, for a museum that features certain Americans because of their gender or race ID, the gift shop sells a book celebrating the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection:
Millions of Americans rely on food assistance just to get by. The program often known as food stamps — officially it’s now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — is a lifeline that permits the needy to purchase basic food items at the grocery store. Last year, SNAP enrollees hit about 42 million. That’s over 12 percent of the American population.
We’re informed that low-skill migrants make America rich. America has never been richer in migrants (CIS):
We’re informed that government spending on poverty relief reduces the number of poor people. The federal government spends more than $100 billion per year of workers’ (chumps’) tax dollars on SNAP. How much larger was the group of helpless government-dependent Americans 25 years ago before the most recent $trillions had been spent on SNAP? According to the USDA, the number of food stamp-dependent Americans in 2000 was… 17 million:
In other words, in the past 25 years the number of Americans who’ve become dependent on food welfare exceeds the population of Taiwan (23 million), where all of the world’s highest-tech integrated circuits and bicycles are made. The Google says that while we managed to grow our food-welfare-dependent population by more than 2X, TSMC grew its market value from $40 billion to over $1 trillion.
(Note that the 42 million Americans who are enrolled in SNAP/EBT shouldn’t be taken as an estimate of the number of Americans receiving what used to be called “welfare”. There are about 78 million Americans currently on Medicaid, for example. Maybe the discrepancy is that a multi-member welfare household shows up just once for SNAP and multiple times for Medicaid? Or some people getting taxpayer-funded food are getting it via programs with other names (see chart below)?)
Inflation-adjusted spending seems to have grown by about 14X since 1970 (USDA):
